The Epic Political Battle Over the Legacy of the Suffragettes

Editor’s Note: Read more stories in our series about women and political power.

There she stood, smiling widely in suffragette white: Hillary Clinton, self-appointed glass-ceiling breaker, poised to carry the legacy of her feminist foremothers right into the Oval Office. That memorable night in June 2016, Clinton was celebrating her ascent as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president—the farthest a woman has ever gotten in a race for the White House. In her speech, she explicitly invoked the activists who won women the right to vote nearly a century ago. Her victory, she said, started generations earlier, “right here in New York, [in] a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848, when a small but determined group of women and men came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights.”

Clinton’s story, of course, did not turn out to be a clean metaphor for the forward march of women’s rights. As the country marks the 100th anniversary of women’s enfranchisement, it’s clear that the suffragists’ legacy is not neat and linear, either—at least not in the way that progressive feminists often claim.

A century after suffrage, the women’s movement is still fighting a battle over inheritance. Progressive feminists widely claim the mantle of suffrage activists, and channeling their energy in fights against Trump-era policies. But a range of conservative activists, especially in the anti-abortion movement, also identify with the early women’s movement. They see their values and ideas reflected in a version of feminism that predates, and remains separate from, the